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Cheer up! We were in jail

By Michael Ball EVERTON PLAYER 1997-98 AND LIVERPOOL ECHO COLUMNIST By Matt Elliott LONG-TIME LEICESTER DEFENDER

EVERTON’S last-day escape in 1998 was nearly a painful experience for me in more ways than one — but thankfully we stayed up by the skin of our teeth.

We’d started the game in the bottom three but knew we could overtake Bolton if we got a better result than them. To our advantage, we were at home against Coventry and they had to go to Chelsea.

I’d been brought up a Blue and was absolutely desperate not to be relegated. But during the game I got smashed by a challenge and was left with a hole in my right knee.

The physio Andy Jones said I had to go off which I didn’t want to do. I pushed him and he gave me a slap back! Our manager Howard Kendall saw how upset I was walking off the pitch and told me to ‘Get back out there’ if I wanted to.

It was such an emotional match. Gareth Farrelly scored for us, Coventry equalised, but we hung on for a point and with Bolton losing 2-0 at Stamford Bridge we’d survived.

It was bedlam at Goodison Park at the final whistle, as it will be again today if we can stay up, but Howard went to his office, I just think he was overcome with the sheer relief of what had happened.

Everton have such a proud record of being in the top division since 1954 and nobody wants to be part of the squad or management team that ends it.

The postscript for me was the club doctor was still angry I’d gone back out to play and threw me against the wall in the dressing room afterwards. His view, which I disagreed with, was that I’d put the team at risk because I wasn’t 100 per cent.

I SEE so many differences between this Leicester City side and the one I played in almost 20 years ago when the club last suffered relegation from the Premier League.

We’d just been promoted, so, from the outset, we knew we were in for a long, tough season. For this Leicester team, it’s all come as a bit of a shock. Quite a few, including the players, have been caught off guard.

Micky Adams brought in a host of players ahead of that 2003-04 season. The squad was full. Most of us had plenty of Premier League experience but coming to the end of our careers, the likes of Les Ferdinand and Paul Dickov. We had good, steady players but not many match-winners.

Muzzy Izzet was the standout player for us, as he so often was. He ended the season with 14 assists, the most in the Premier League that season, and in a relegated side. That takes some doing, especially when we were a side that battled more than anything, digging in and working hard. Les and Paul did well in front of goal.

The ability was there but not at the level that some of the current boys possess like James Maddison and Youri Tielemans.

So there was a nagging feeling from the off that maybe it wasn’t going to be our season but that didn’t affect the morale. We rarely dominated but were always in games. We just made a habit of conceding late goals.

We were more like the Leicester side that came up — and then stayed up — under Nigel Pearson. The first three-quarters of that season was a similar story. For us, we couldn’t close the margins. They did and it culminated in the Great Escape. For us, it was a step too far. I wasn’t there for the finish as I joined Ipswich on loan. But in the end relegation seemed inevitable.

That season will always be remembered, too, for the ‘La Manga affair’ when Dickov, Frank Sinclair and Keith Gillespie were falsely accused of sexual assault while we were on a training camp at the Spanish resort.

That was huge at the time. We weren’t superstars but we were Premier League players. It was on every news channel, every front page. We soon realised the severity when eight of us spent two-and-a-half days in a prison cell before the other three lads who were charged were in there for another week on top of that. I was with Gillespie, Dickov, Lilian Nalis in one cell. Danny Coyne, Nikos Dabizas, Sinclair and James Scowcroft were in another. Stefan Freund was also questioned but released. It was like a dungeon. Dank, cold, miserable. Bars from ceiling to floor. We got fed bread and water. We slept in our clothes it was so cold.

I remember us being taken in a meat wagon to a holding cell at the court at 6.30am. Eight of us in a cell built for four people all day. We were released one by one and while the other three were charged and got an extra week in jail, all charges were later dropped.

In some ways, Micky Adams should take credit. He tried to use it to bring us together in the face of adversity. We did beat Birmingham while the three lads were still in prison.

It’s tough to put your finger on what’s gone wrong with this current Leicester side. It’s a combination of a few things. Recruitment, or lack of it. Some of the messages coming from Brendan Rodgers didn’t help.

Leicester played a way that wasn’t working for too long. They’d play how they wanted to against teams who wanted them to play that way. They’ve been too open at the back, at set-pieces and in open play. They kept making the same mistakes, falling into the same traps and paying the same price. You get on a slide that becomes very difficult to halt.

There was always a belief that fortunes would turn because of the quality of the players Leicester have. Yet some of those top players haven’t performed as well as they might and, perhaps, we’re seeing a reflection of some of the others’ true capabilities.

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2023-05-28T07:00:00.0000000Z

2023-05-28T07:00:00.0000000Z

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